A CATHOLIC influencer has announced the tragic death of his five-year-old son.
Paul J Kim’s son Micah had been hospitalised 11 days ago, after contracting a severe case of the flu.
The illness later triggered sepsis and seizures.
After an escalation of his symptoms, Micah had been placed on life support, however it wasn’t enough to save him.
Paul, 44, shared the heartbreaking news that his son had died on New Year’s Eve with his 346,000 followers.
“After fighting 11 long hard days, [Micah] went home to the house of our father,” he said in an emotional video posted to social media platform Instagram.
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“We are so proud of him.
“I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart as his dad, on behalf of my family, for all the ways you guys prayed and lifted us up during this time,” he added.
Throughout the video, Paul’s tears continued to flow.
“This [is an] incredibly difficult, impossible time for our family,” he said.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been through in my life and it continues to be.
“As much as this time I just want to have privacy and have time to mourn with my family, I felt like I owed all of you an update, just out of gratitude.”
“Micah is already in heaven at work, seriously, so many testimonies, so many ways in which God is using the light in my five-year-old to truly save souls and change the world,” Paul added.
The beloved influencer said his family’s hearts are “broken” but they “trust in the Lord”.
“Please pray for my family and me as we learn to live by faith and not by sight,” he said.
“For those two weeks we were fighting long and hard, we were consulting legal, healthethical teams even outside the hospitaljust to make sure we weren’t leaving any stone unturned.
“In many ways we were fighting for Micah to buy him as much time as possible, until he passed,” Paul said.
The father of six said it had been “his duty”.
“I was called to do that, even if in God’s ultimate will it wasn’t meant for him to recover” he said.
Paul first spoke about his son’s health battle online on December 21, saying Micah had been “having a medical emergency right now and headed to the hospital in an ambulance”.
The influencer asked his followers to send prayers and hopes of a miracle to his son, while regularly posting videos of him in the hospital.
Throughout the time at hospital, Paul revealed Micah’s scans had displayed no brain activity, saying he needed “a miracle to survive”.
On Christmas Day, Micah’s heart rate showed signs of “improving”, however he was still suffering with significant brain swelling.
Paul announced on December 27 that an MRI of his son’s brain had shown such severe damage that there was “no medical possibility… that he can recover”.
“So here is what we are up against right now,” Paul had said.
“We are up against the reality that at this point, God must intervene.
“Our hearts are absolutely broken but we are not done fighting until the Lord says otherwise.”
The family had garnered celebrity support from Gwen Stefani, who commented “praying for your son”, on one of Paul’s posts.
Paul is a best-selling author of A Catholic Guide to Adulting, and founded the Triumph Men’s Conference.
He grew his huge social media following as a therapist, missionary and youth minister.
An online fundraiser to support Micah and the Kim family, as well as to assist in medical bills had raised more than $360,000 at time of writing.